The Quiet American

Rip It Up, Issue 133, 1 August 1988, Page 8

The Quiet American

The best way of remaining upright in a swaying audience at a live concert is to keep your weight evenly divided between both legs. Jerry Harrison has used the same trick to survive 10 years in Talking Heads — he spreads himself.

In Auckland, Harrison and band the Casual Gods gave audiences plenty to choose from; fracks from his solo albums, a hit single, a song from a movie soundtrack, and a coupleof Talking Heads singles. The style wandered

between the synth-heavy (circa 1981) and the afro-funky. The band included a spooked-out Bernie Worrell and a pudgy (but light-fingered) Chris Spedding. Harrison was unassuming on stage. He is not a showman. He matched Worrell on keyboards

but didn't draw attention to the fact. He played guitar about as well as Spedding but didn’t showcase it. His lyrics might be as good as David Byrne’s but we’ll never know ’coz Jerry doesn’t like lyric sheets. At the Hyatt on the afternoon

prior to the concert Jerry ' _ Harrison walks into the hotel < room late, carrying two pillow-cases full of dirty washing. ' . “The rock and roll lifestyle, huh?” he grins, and delivers a polite handshake. Jerry Harrison is a very nice guy. ' ■ His new solo album Casual Gods has spawned a hit single,. ‘Rev It Up’ atatime when Talking Heads latest album is failing to catch peoples’ imagination. .The recent successes of Little ' Creatures, Speaking In ; ■ Tongues and the films True Stories and Stop Making Sense, made the world seem like a : place that would never be rid of Talking Heads, but with Naked ■ they seem to have finally lost their grip on the mainstream marketplace. ‘Rev It Up’ has shot up the charts in their place. Harrison’s name has also been associated with the reasonably successful movie soundtrack for Something Wild, having . produced the Fine Young Cannibals for the LP and contributing the loping, enigmatic 'Man With A Gun’: That’s made touring wit>h his second solo album good and profitable; touring with the first, . The Fled And The Black would have been a failure. In content, at least, the scope of Casual Gods Fis ambitious. The cover and slick feature four unsettling photographs of contemporary South American' peasants stripping a mountain face for gold, mud-caked and sweating in their thousands as they crawl up the side of the hill. They represent the unfair ■ regencies of “casual gods”, - and also a political opinion . which Talking Heads would never court. For Harrison, * politics is not a new thing. “I was involved in demonstrations against the Vietnam war, he recalls, “and I got pretty heavily involved with political analysis, so that interest

never really went away. When I first joined Talking Heads I brought up political questions and I realised that first of all I was probably the most left-wing member of the band and we just didn’t agree, and second, that they had quite a stringent policy of staying away from issues that just weren't the business of rock and roll. The band do have a view of the world and keep their eyes open, but theirs has been far more of an interest in culture. “At the time that was just fine, but when I got to work on my own politics was something I could get to deal with. I wanted the cover to reflect the dark side of ■ the album; ‘Bobby’, which is about suicide, and ‘Cherokee Chief’ which is about the death squads in El Salvador. And yet I didn't want to make a concept album about that — it would be too ponderous, too heavy. Albums like that... the subject matter weighs them down.” Hence the happy irony of Jerry Harrison, the man from Talking Heads, having a big hit with a song about cars and girls. “That’s right! It’s great, like Eddie Cochran. That’s a great challenge for me, to write something that’s in the tradition of rock and roll and to then write something like ‘Cherokee Chief’, which almost sounds like a car song but has extra meaning.” Jerry Harrison has been the Talking Head who has said the least in the band’s ten-year career. Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz spoke loud and clear via the Tom Tom Club. When the band first liased with Brian Eno, both David Byrne and Harrison visited the English musician to swap theories and books; after Remain In Light only Byrne and Eno were in the spotlight, and it seemed that Eno had stole Harrison’s place in the band. “Working with Brian was the beginning of people asking a great deal of questions about

what I was doing in the band. A lot of what I was doing got accredited to him because he was always thought of as a keyboards player. He's not — he’s more of a one-finger musician." "I found Remain In Light a very uplifting experience. Eno showed us that the studio could be used as an instrument itself, using delays and effects. It made the studio a place where you went and worked on your music rather than a place where you just went to record it. It was innovative at the time, but not so much now. With remixes being so popular now, people are aware of how much you can use the studio to change the character of a song.” After Remain In Lightwas completed, Eno pressured Byrne to change the credits on the album sleeve. Byrne and Eno were the only named songwriters; the rest, session musicians and all, were just Talking Heads. Although Harrison is unruffled now, the resulting arguments threatened to split the band at the time. And the fact that it was Harrison who brought in Nona Hendryx to help on vocals (thus cementing the band's funk influence) must have been salt intothe wound. Jerry just smiles and remembers the good times. “When they were going'to do background vocals [on Remain In Light], Brian was insisting that he would do them all. And I really don't like the way Brian sings, so I said look, I know a background singer. And he said, ‘No, it’ll take too long’.” “But Nona came in and they sang together and I've never seen Brian so happy. His voice began to come alive. Nona was so heartfelt —she’s a master at it. I wish it was something they’d pursued. I think had we not had a little bit of tension after Remain In Lightthat Brian could have gone on to do something that was an incredible breakthrough. Instead he kind ►

► of retreated towards his ambient music.” Hendryx and Harrison share credits for vocal arrangements on his subsequent solo project Red And The Black. When Harrison released a solo single, 'Five Minutes’ in 1984 he arranged for another funkster, Bootsy Collins, to meet him in his Milwaukee studio. “Bootsy had been in Washington,” Harrison remembers, giggling.“and Bootsy hates to fly. We were in this great rush to get ‘Five Minutes' but before the [U.S. . Presidential] election. So he was driving from Washington to Milwaukee. I'd get these calls : . from his manager: “Jerry? Hi. I’d Hike you to know that Bootsy’s - just crossed the Maryland border”... "Jerry? Bootsy’s . sleeping now, he's in Indiana.” You could have pinned it out on a map — Bootsy's Progress. ” .. ‘Five Minutes'was a dance track that used a sample of President Reagan’s famous sound check’’ gaffe — the joke about “we begin bombing . Russia in five minutes” that was accidently broadcasted (the Russians tuned in and put their | planes on alert for several hours afterwards). It was released

under the name of Bonzo Goes To Washington, so it seemed appropriate to ask Harrison for his reaction to the fact that

Reagan is about to leave the office of President.

"Thank God I ” he laughs. “He’s been' a nightmare. ■ ■. Foreign policy in this election has almost become a non-issue because Reagan has changed so much; calling for arms control, calling Gorbachev a great man. Someone said he's paid Gorbachev more

compliments in one speech than he has George Bush in eightyears!” And what of George Bush? “I feel sorry for him - his is a job that has very little to it. He’s also very favourite for malapropisms. He made a statement once, “Ronald

Reagan and I had sex together" instead of “Ronald Reagan and I talked together,” or something. Some sort of dyslexia... Jesse Jackson is the first person in the elections in a long time who has been exciting — he can really raise an audience to a fever pitch,” he adds. And then, with unwitting irony—“ He’s almost a demi-god.” Jerry Harrison doesn't know what he'll be doing when he’s finished this tour. He plans anotheralbum underthe Casual Gods banner, “although I might be producing someone. I’m not sure” and soon Talking Heads must rear its thin-necked cranium once more. Live at the Power Station that night, Harrison is still playing the nice guy. The stage is no place for ego or funny suits. Guitarist Alex Weir, ex-Stop Making Sense, and a disgracefully attractive backing singer break into a little jog during one Talking Heads song, reminding the audience that Jerry Harrison belongs to a band who once did a stage show. When Harrison sings “this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco" he slips into a whine that recalls a certain skinny New Yorker. How does he stand working in the shadow of Byrne and Talking Heads with such good humour and patience? At the interview’s end he points to his baby son, just wheeled in by mom.

“I think [touring] is very good for him, it’s like being in a gypsy tribe. He gets along with all the members of the band and they all pick him up. He meets all these different people from

different countries and gets

used to their accents, facial structures and colours and

sounds. I think it makes him very trusting. It’s healthy for him.” Jerry Harrison notices the Rip It Up cover of Ziggy Marley. .'. “You know, I played on this album...”. ?

Chad Taylor